Why ZoS nerfed every sustain skill in the game, except dark deal/conversion?

Neloth

I know I'll get tons of jokes about developers manning sorcs and so on, but I'm curious about serious explaination.

EC_Rob

Equilibrium also didnt get a nerf. (It isnt very usefull though) But as it seems they leave skills that use other recourses to fill another untouched. Why this is the case i cant tell to be honest

Enjoy!

arkansas_ESO

Every sustain skill that they nerfed scaled off the size of your resource pools, whereas Dark Deal was already only scaling with your character level. That isn't to say Dark Deal is balanced (it isn't in the context of the other nerfs), but that's why ZOS didn't target it.

LegacyDM

Better question is why have stam sorcs never been nerfed?! they have been OP for as long as I can remember.

Biro123

LegacyDM wrote: »

Better question is why have stam sorcs never been nerfed?! they have been OP for as long as I can remember.

They were nerfed last patch (Hurricane) - and not too long ago (bre Dark Brotherhood), they were so bad that nobody played them. At All.

But yeah, a number of reasons for not nerfing it.

1. It scales off your level, not stats
2. Its fuelled by your minor resource which generally has very little recov, limiting how much it can be used.
3. The main recov of your minor resource was from Constitution - which had a massive nerf
4. It wasn't that long ago they buffed Dark Deal - where it went from an unused ability (just like Equilibrium) to a class staple. They don't want it going back to what it was.
5. For PVP the generic sustain nerfs hit magsorcs more than most because shielding is a proactive defence, not reactive.. ie you need it up before you get hit - which means wasting resources casting it when not needed.

Waffennacht

LegacyDM wrote: »

Better question is why have stam sorcs never been nerfed?! they have been OP for as long as I can remember.

The first two years of no abilities I think counts as a nerf

aLi3nZ

It is already an interruptible channeled slow to use skill. I dont see a reason for a nerf

visionality

Biro123 wrote: »

LegacyDM wrote: »

Better question is why have stam sorcs never been nerfed?! they have been OP for as long as I can remember.

They were nerfed last patch (Hurricane) - and not too long ago (bre Dark Brotherhood), they were so bad that nobody played them. At All.

But yeah, a number of reasons for not nerfing it.

1. It scales off your level, not stats
2. Its fuelled by your minor resource which generally has very little recov, limiting how much it can be used.
3. The main recov of your minor resource was from Constitution - which had a massive nerf
4. It wasn't that long ago they buffed Dark Deal - where it went from an unused ability (just like Equilibrium) to a class staple. They don't want it going back to what it was.
5. For PVP the generic sustain nerfs hit magsorcs more than most because shielding is a proactive defence, not reactive.. ie you need it up before you get hit - which means wasting resources casting it when not needed.

Thanks for the explanation, @Biro123, couldn't have given a better one.

Additional thing to consider: All nerfed regen abiliites are ones that you cast before/when entering the fight and then they tick off while you're doing your stuff. Dark Deal forces you to stop anything else while you cast it. Plus it takes a long time to channel (4 seconds), can be interrupted, and you cannot animation-cancel it. Plus it's useless to cast before a fight because you don't need to fill up full ressources. Also, if you're low on ressources, one dark deal is not nearly enough to fill them up again. You have to cast several, meaning you either have to completely pull out of a fight (if you can), or you play sitting duck and hope nobody hits you hard or bashes you while you channel dark deal.

Neloth

aLi3nZ wrote: »

It is already an interruptible channeled slow to use skill. I dont see a reason for a nerf

Good luck interrupting it on 80% of magicka builds, who don't run cursing shock. A lot of mag build don't even have a gap closer to interrupt streak->dark deal.

Also, good luck interrupting a mag sorc standing on mines on any build.

The point is, when I play my magsorc (which heavily relies on dark conversion sustain, I never get constantly interrupted by anything except crushing shock).

Biro123 wrote: »

3. The main recov of your minor resource was from Constitution - which had a massive nerf

That's a fair point.

Biro123 wrote: »

It wasn't that long ago they buffed Dark Deal - where it went from an unused ability (just like Equilibrium) to a class staple. They don't want it going back to what it was.

But they still want other abilities to become unusable (like siphoning attacks with 190 mag return per weave).

Still, my position is:

1) You will sacrifice much less dmg to sustain next patch, if your sustain is build around dark deal/conversion. So, overall you'll have much better offensive stats and much better sustain on sorc, compared to other classes.

2) It's not that easy to counter on a lot of builds. And I don't want to adjust my build (like slotting crushing shock instead of funnel health, etc), to counter a single class sustain skill.

Biro123

Neloth wrote: »

aLi3nZ wrote: »

It is already an interruptible channeled slow to use skill. I dont see a reason for a nerf

Good luck interrupting it on 80% of magicka builds, who don't run cursing shock. A lot of mag build don't even have a gap closer to interrupt streak->dark deal.

Also, good luck interrupting a mag sorc standing on mines on any build.

The point is, when I play my magsorc (which heavily relies on dark conversion sustain, I never get constantly interrupted by anything except crushing shock).

Biro123 wrote: »

3. The main recov of your minor resource was from Constitution - which had a massive nerf

That's a fair point.

Biro123 wrote: »

It wasn't that long ago they buffed Dark Deal - where it went from an unused ability (just like Equilibrium) to a class staple. They don't want it going back to what it was.

But they still want other abilities to become unusable (like siphoning attacks with 190 mag return per weave).

Still, my position is:

1) You will sacrifice much less dmg to sustain next patch, if your sustain is build around dark deal/conversion. So, overall you'll have much better offensive stats and much better sustain on sorc, compared to other classes.

2) It's not that easy to counter on a lot of builds. And I don't want to adjust my build (like slotting crushing shock instead of funnel health, etc), to counter a single class sustain skill.

Just trolling a bit - but if siphoning becomes useless - doesn't that leave a slot on your bar for CS ?


Alright - so on the PTS I had a build idea and tried making a sorc build that tried to avoid some the stuff that people complain about.
It used only one shield (so no stacking) - to survive that shield being easily burst through, I was wearing heavy armour - which meant losing the cost-reduction of light armour - which should be ok, right? cos I won't need to shield so much.
The only heal(s) used is Dark Exchange and surge - with the plan of using dark exchange more often as less shielding means taking more damage(but mitigated with heavy)... But for that mitigation to really work, you need to block - so Frost staff (8% dmg loss).
Sustain.. I needed to run 2 sustain sets to be workable as sorc without light armour - and I needed stuff to sustain stamina too for my only heal (and dodge/breakfree).

So I went Bloodthorn/Blackrose.

Dropped Frags (too many reflects) - so dmg only from CS/Wrath/curse. Mobility from streak/boundless. Inner light to try to make up for the loss of crit for going heavy - and to try to get a bit more mag for slightly stronger shields. Hardened Ward, Power Surge and Dark Conversoin.. Oh and Ele Drain too for more sustain and to make up for losing the light-armour penetration.
Running Witchmothers Potent Brew
It was also using mag drain enchants on an infused staff too (since its all I had on pts)

It sounds ok on paper.. It kind of sounds like a tank on paper

In practice there are massive flaws compared to my usual light-armour setup.:
Magica is only 38k - much, much less to what I'm used to running - making the shield much, much smaller - and damage substantially lower.
Penetration is lower
Crit chance is significantly lower (32%)

Sustain was fine as long as I had ele-drain on my target, keep attacking and took light hits.

Without ele-drain - I had to Dark-Exchange quite a bit. Ele-drain is quite unreliable when shooting into a zerg.

Mobility was good

Defence was poor. The shield was intended to be used in such a way to try to not keep it up all the time, and instead to be a barrier to keep you alive while you heal back with dark exchange. In reality, when under pressure, the shield didn't quite last its cooldown - so spamming it as fast as possible meant eventual death - mostly because you'e not gaining resources from attacking - so you run dry very quick..
If you try dark-dealing instead and don't get interrupted - it still isn't enough to make up for the incoming damage you take during the time of that dark deal. You also start running low on stam so can't dodge either.. You can't block-cast dark-deal, being a channel and all. And Blocking doesn't really help when shields are up too (should maybe throw away the frost staff)...

So basically with 2 sustain sets, AND a sustain drink, AND Dark-Exchange as is, this build had much worse damage, much worse survivability and could not sustain under pressure. Sometimes I was dark-exchanging every 3 or 4 casts, ometimes to recover the mg loss from blocking. Doing so much exchanging = doing very little of anything else (shields/dmg) Was good at running away though. I mean yes, its only an experimental build - but one to try to play dark exchange to its strengths.. and it didn't work.

Part of the problem with sorcs is that there is really only one way to play them simply because it far outshines everything else... Now if that gets nerfed, they should also look at other ways to play to make it viable... eg. nerf shields, but allow damage to them to be reduced by block - or armour mitigation... Or make them instant and cancel other stuff like block/dodge does so you can use them reactively. nerf dark-exchange, but make it an instant so you can block-cast it or ani-cancel with dodge.. Or make it over time so you can just pop it then wail away...

Cathexis

Being bashable still renders it almost trash close range and if you play a stam sorc you would know that you have to overinvest so hard into damage close range that dark deal ends up being your gimped out close range alternative to being able to just invest in sustain. People paint that *** like its amazing but its a gaping hole in the sorc class that guts close range play given the current stat/utility dynamic.

Waffennacht wrote: »

LegacyDM wrote: »

Better question is why have stam sorcs never been nerfed?! they have been OP for as long as I can remember.

The first two years of no abilities I think counts as a nerf

Without mobility or proper defensive utility, it needs to be a 2 or 3 second hot without a cast time